The present invention relates generally to apparatus and methods for treating wounds, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for healing closed incisions following surgery.
America wastes over a billion dollars annually, on post-operative surgical site infection expenses. These surgeries have an acknowledged overall infection rate of between 15%-30%. Surgical site infection slows the recovery rate for patients and adds additional health costs with prolonged hospital treatment, additional home care, physician office and emergency room visits expenses.
Typically, physicians often respond to the risk of wound infection with the “open wound” technique, subjecting patients to psychological torment of the patient knowing they have an open wound, restricting them from normal activity. The patient is left with a hole in their body open to the outside; which requires additional health maintenance including additional dressing changes by visiting nurses, additional physician consultation and additional high cost of vacuum device usually for a week or longer.
Physicians, attempts to avoid an open wound, will often install a drainage device in the patient. This is accomplished by placing a plastic tube into the patient, horizontally along the fascia layer and closing the wound around the tube. The most common drains; the “J-Drain”, and “Penrose Drain”, do not remove fluid from all three layers of skin, have a tendency to clog up and can even increase the production of additional fluid in patients; at times making the infection and recovery issues worse. The drains must then eventually be removed by surgeon, sometimes weeks after surgery. Research shows these drains have a poor rate of success with some studies showing an actual increase in patient complications.
Patients enduring the traditional old fashioned healing systems frequently require weeks to recover, extensive follow-up treatments and procedures and have increased the risk of complications and even death.
Recently, open wound “negative pressure” treatments are now also being touted as the answer for closed incision as well as open wound infection preventative treatments; this treatment simply removes excess fluid from cutaneous areas from the outer skin level. Negative pressure treatments fail to effectively address the underlining cause of surgical site infection (SSI) in closed incisions. The negative pressure VAC (vacuum) systems are also very expensive and are physician and nurse-labor intensive. The data surrounding the VAC systems appears to be mixed and studies appear to show that these systems involve patients with fewer high risk factors prior to surgery.
SSI infections may occur from the following, but not limited to: colorectal, general surgery, OBGYN, urology, vascular, neurosurgery and other procedures. The incisions or wounds closed following their respective surgeries are susceptible to high infection rates and slow patient recovery periods which also impact the physician, staff, hospital, insurer, etc. Moreover, SSI costs hospitals billions of dollars every year in the U.S. and insurance companies do not reimburse hospitals for maladies caused by infection, and corresponding complications, due to surgical site infection.
Thus, there remains a need for an apparatus and associated method that enables the physician to close the wound without significantly increasing the risk of surgical site infection to the patient, thereby being able to safely close more patients following surgery and improving their lives. The apparatus and associated method is easy to remove from the patient and is a cost effective solution.
All references cited herein are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.